Nicole Scherzinger Wishes She Was Just a Little Sluttier

Nicole Scherzinger is absolutely insane, and I mean that in the best possible way. Anyone who’s watched her on The X Factor (US or UK) knows that she comes out with some of the most colourful, hilarious shit I’ve ever heard in my life. Pretty much everyone knows who she is a bit – well, at least if you start singing The Pussycat Dolls’ ‘Don’t Cha’, anyway – but she’s definitely not a mega star. The reason why? Well, according to the lady herself, she’s not a big enough slut.

She says that it took years for her to come out of her shell, to feel comfortable in her own skin, and in the perpetual spotlight. Yet she is perfectly happy in her bra and pants these days, and you could say that she now almost aggressively courts an overly sexualised image. Conclusive proof of that came with her 2011 solo album Killer Love, which featured a duet with 50 Cent called “Right There” that dispensed with double entendres entirely in favour of blunt single ones. “I like the way that you keep me coming,” she sang. “So good you had me running/ Me like the way that he goin’ down down down down down uh.”

Intriguingly, she delivered all this in so blatant a cod-Barbadian accent that it was difficult to tell whether she was aping Barbados-born Rihanna, one of her main competitors, or mocking her. Which was it?

“Well, um… you know.” She laughs, the sliver of a giggle, then seamlessly changes tack. “With these kind of songs, I don’t feel I have to justify myself to anyone. I come from the most religious family – my grandfather is a priest – and if they support me in all this, and they do, then I’m OK. I’m being sassy and classy; I’m having fun. I’m not coming from a dark place. To be honest with you, I sometimes wish I were more slutty. I’d probably be a lot more successful if I were.”

I’ve got a big problem with slut shaming, especially when it comes from a fellow woman, though I think she was using the term in a more colloquial sense and not actually saying that women who are a bit more overtly sexualised are sluts. Then again, if you listen to the lyrics of her songs, she doesn’t have much room to talk – ‘Right There’ is about f-cking, ‘Don’t Cha’ is about f-cking… need I go on?

At the end of the day, I don’t think Nicole’s lack of worldwide domination has that much to do with her unwillingness to get her ass out and more to do with her weirdness. Being a bad-ass is fine, being “quirky” is passable, but being outright strange is sort of not really embraced widely, which is a shame, because I do think she’s great. What do we think – did Nicole ever have a chance at Lady GaGa status?